PTC fees kill industry deal, 165 jobs

Tue, 08/10/2010 - 1:12pmJohn Munford

A Jonesboro company that had intended to relocate to Peachtree City has withdrawn from the effort.

Low Temp Industries Inc., would have brought 165 jobs here but has bowed out because the company would have to pay for the city sewer line to be extended to its proposed site at the intersection of Ga. Highway 74 and Redwine Road.

Low Temp president Ben Casey, in a letter to the city, said the company would be terminating its land purchase agreement immediately.

“Due to the mounting project costs associated with the sewer, tap/impact/permit fees, landscape requirements and overall land cost, we have determined that the project is not feasible today,” Casey wrote. “Therefore we are unwilling to move forward with the project at this time and are disappointed to convey this news.”

Casey in his letter noted that in recent weeks the unresolved issues surrounding the relocation left the company with the impression there was never “a single person in charge of shepherding the project through the various governing authorities towards a successful result.”

“Over the past few weeks, our confidence in the ability to develop the site has diminished,” Casey said. “The inability of the city, the Fayette County Development Authority and the Peachtree City Water and Sewerage Authority to get the sewer issue resolved at no cost to Low Temp coupled with the confusion over fees, buffers and schedules between the county, city and planning commission made the road to relocating extremely difficult to forecast and comprehend at times.”

Low Temp was projected to have to pay $51,000 in sewer tap-in fees but the city’s Water and Sewer Authority was willing to chip in $250,000 of the projected $550,000 cost for the sewer extension project, said WASA General Manager Stephen Hogan. The authority would have later recouped that money from future development, Hogan said.

The authority planned for Low Temp and another developer that would have benefitted from the extension, Dominion Properties, to split the remaining $300,000 cost for the sewer expansion, Hogan said.